Neither being "poor" nor being a "college student" is a disability under the ADA or a category protected under the Unruh Act. Lawsuits, you see, to have much hope of succeeding have to be based on these things called "laws".
How does this end bad for site developers? Seems that, inasmuch as it creates new requirements, it expands the demand for services of skilled developers, not reduces it.
Information related to the case is here, including, among other things, the judge's ruling and the original complaint. Those may go some way to addressing your questions.
A judge's job is to interpret the laws that exist, not to "call for" new laws. And, here, the judge only allowed only the parts of the claim relating to information concerning Target's physical stores to go forward, and threw out the rest of the claims. So it seems that the judge feels that the applicable laws (both the ADA and the state law at issue) is already clear: inasmuch as the features of a website pertain to the use of a physical facility, they may be within the coverage of those laws.
How is using a lawsuit to enforce rights under existing state and federal law a bad idea? How would you suggest they enforce rights under existing laws? Get down on their knees and beg for people to follow the law out of the goodness of their hearts?
...but note that only the claims related to information related to the physical stores were allowed to proceed, those related to online services/information not related to the physical stores were thrown out.
And even those that were allowed forward simply allow the plaintiffs to make the case that the law was violated.
Yeah, well "the people" got together and created this institution called "government", through which some of the people, answerable to the people as a whole, act as the agent of the people as a whole, and for example, in the US, assigned the federal implementation of this "government" thing the responsibility for regulating things with substantial impacts on interstate (including international) commerce. Including, inter alia, regulating wide ranging monopolies.
Other groups of people, having formed their own "governments", have similarly assigned them various tasks, including frequently that of controlling monopolies.
What it really seems to me you want is to deny the people the ability to work collectively to deal with monopolies, but instead to demand that they do it separately and create better opportunities for failure via the tragedy of the commons.
Monopolies on individual specific devices are not the same kind of restraint on business as a business monopoly.
Well, sure a "business process" is a different thing than a widget, and widget-patents impose different real restrictions than "business process"-patents and vice versa (similarly, say, an encryption algorithm patent is a different thing than either, and imposes yet a different set of restrictions.)
There are different things subject to patent, and they impose different practical restrictions. This is clear.
No process, business or otherwise, should be subject to patent, though we are discussing a problematic case of exactly that kind of inappropriate patent.
Its not enough merely to assert that this should not be the case, and further to assert that it is "obvious" (as you previously did) that this is the case, or to simply state that it is "different" than other patents. If you want to convince everyone of this, rather than show off for those people that already agree with you, you ought to make an argument as to why not rather than simply saying that it shouldn't be done and making vague noises about freedom.
As far as I can see, the rationale for business process patents is the same as for other patents, to protect and those who take the risks inherent in developing a new useful process so as too encourage risk-taking in that area and promote progress. I don't see why business process patents are categorically bad.
I can certainly see arguments that the patent system we have now is bad in a lot of more general ways, or that certain classes of patents should have more limited duration, etc. but I don't see that business process patents are, as a category, bad where others are good.
No, not really. Its not illegal to acquire monopoly power in a market.
However, if you do, it becomes illegal for you to act in ways you would, if you did not have a monopoly, be allowed to act, related to protecting that monopoly or extending it into other markets.
Uhm, maybe I'm missing the obvious, but all they did was take Blockbuster and throw it online.
No, they didn't.
I mean, yes, if they had you pick out movies, and then they sent you exactly those movies for a limited period of time, and then you sent them back and could get new ones, that would be the unpatented model of almost everyone b&m movie rental store (and Netflix original model, before they came up with the new and innovative one.)
But that's not what Netflix started doing that made it a break out hit and actually threatened Blockbusters business.
Business patents are by definition monopolies. No patent should be awarded on anything that isn't a working mechanical device, at least a prototype.
Working mechanical device patents (and, for that matter, all copyrights) are also, by definition, monopolies.
Descriptions of ideas, whether human readable or machine readable, are subject only to copyright.
Descriptions are subject to copyright. Processes, business or otherwise, are subject to patent.
Identifying marks, like logos and slogans, are only trademarks.
Identifying marks used in trade are subject to trademark protection, but they are also quite often subject to copyright protection as well.
These principles are obvious.
These "principles" aren't "obvious", there statements of either your misguided opinion of what the law is, or your personal opinion of what is should be, not some universal self-evident statements of truth.
They will be deperately hard pressed to prove they innovated many , if any, of these business practices, and I believe some of their patents could actually be thrown out because of being brought to the light of day like this.
They have, as far as I can tell, precisely two patents, one covering their process, and the other covering their mailing envelope.
It doesn't really matter if Blockbuster was working on developing a similar online rental program first, anymore than in a patent for a more traditional invention it would matter if someone else had thought of the same general idea and was in the process of developing it into a patentable invention.
How exactly is renting movies online an original or novel idea?
Its possible to do online movie rental without violating either of the patents at issue here; describing the patents as covering "renting moviews online" is sloppy. They cover two specific aspects of the way Netflix handles its movie rental system. Whether those specific aspects are novel, not whether "renting moviews online" is novel, ought to be the question.
I'm not sure who the first was, but up to 30 years ago, you could rent books on tape the same way.
Did they use the Netflix style mailer? Did they use the Netflix-style preference lists, or strict this-one-next queues or some other method of selecting what you get? Because those seem to be the two specific patents at issue, and doing something similar in outline but outside of the specific innovation claimed in the patent isn't clearly prior art relevant to the patent.
What about other companies doing exactly the same thing? Like DVDBarn, Intelliflix, etc.? Is Netflix suing them, too?
It may be more efficient to pursue such lawsuits in series rather than parallel, its also possible that the details of some of the similar operations avoid the specific patented processes. It may be that they've C&D'ed some of the others, and are negotiating and haven't gotten to the point of filing a lawsuit yet. It's hard to tell.
I think the suggestion is that Vista will succeed regardless of its merits because of Microsoft's aggressive marketing partnerships which will be pushing it everywhere, both through new purchases and to people getting service on their old machines.
Titan's a moon of Saturn, so if Jupiter was a brown dwarf it wouldn't do much. Then again, while it has a substantial atmosphere (uniquely among all moons in the Solar System), I'd hardly say it's "pretty close" to earthlike conditions, other than having a dense, mostly-nitrogen atmosphere.
Cats and dogs are sentient, as the term is generally used. The term has sometimes been borrowed in science fiction to denote human-like intellect, but given its well-established use, that's a poor borrowing (better is the more common "sapient" or, as a noun, "sophont"; the latter isn't a word in general use but has an appropriate etymology, the former is in general use, but in a way that supports the pseudo-technical extension of its meaning to this use better than "sentient".)
Rather than the clunky, misleading, and overly broad use of "Earth like," I wish articles like this would use the perfectly good term "terrestrial."
While its more accurate domain-specific jargon, its really not any more communicative to anyone else, I mean in
common use? it means pertaining to, consisting of, or representing the earth as distinct from other planets, which is pretty close to precisely the opposite of the distinction you are trying to make here, and the natural interpretation from the etymology is "earthlike". For use to a non-astronomically-technical audience, "rocky world" is probably best, and "Earth-like" is no less clear than "terrestrial".
Hispanic isn't a race (despite the little checkboxes on various government forms).
The Hispanic checkbox is usually listed as an ethnicity, either separate from races or in a category "Race/Ethnicity" where one other category is "White (not of Hispanic origin)".
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Neither being "poor" nor being a "college student" is a disability under the ADA or a category protected under the Unruh Act. Lawsuits, you see, to have much hope of succeeding have to be based on these things called "laws".
How does this end bad for site developers? Seems that, inasmuch as it creates new requirements, it expands the demand for services of skilled developers, not reduces it.
Information related to the case is here, including, among other things, the judge's ruling and the original complaint. Those may go some way to addressing your questions.
And you would think this...why?
Because other Americans really love to ignore the law.
A judge's job is to interpret the laws that exist, not to "call for" new laws. And, here, the judge only allowed only the parts of the claim relating to information concerning Target's physical stores to go forward, and threw out the rest of the claims. So it seems that the judge feels that the applicable laws (both the ADA and the state law at issue) is already clear: inasmuch as the features of a website pertain to the use of a physical facility, they may be within the coverage of those laws.
How is using a lawsuit to enforce rights under existing state and federal law a bad idea? How would you suggest they enforce rights under existing laws? Get down on their knees and beg for people to follow the law out of the goodness of their hearts?
...but note that only the claims related to information related to the physical stores were allowed to proceed, those related to online services/information not related to the physical stores were thrown out.
And even those that were allowed forward simply allow the plaintiffs to make the case that the law was violated.
Yeah, well "the people" got together and created this institution called "government", through which some of the people, answerable to the people as a whole, act as the agent of the people as a whole, and for example, in the US, assigned the federal implementation of this "government" thing the responsibility for regulating things with substantial impacts on interstate (including international) commerce. Including, inter alia, regulating wide ranging monopolies.
Other groups of people, having formed their own "governments", have similarly assigned them various tasks, including frequently that of controlling monopolies.
What it really seems to me you want is to deny the people the ability to work collectively to deal with monopolies, but instead to demand that they do it separately and create better opportunities for failure via the tragedy of the commons.
Well, sure a "business process" is a different thing than a widget, and widget-patents impose different real restrictions than "business process"-patents and vice versa (similarly, say, an encryption algorithm patent is a different thing than either, and imposes yet a different set of restrictions.)
There are different things subject to patent, and they impose different practical restrictions. This is clear.
Its not enough merely to assert that this should not be the case, and further to assert that it is "obvious" (as you previously did) that this is the case, or to simply state that it is "different" than other patents. If you want to convince everyone of this, rather than show off for those people that already agree with you, you ought to make an argument as to why not rather than simply saying that it shouldn't be done and making vague noises about freedom.
As far as I can see, the rationale for business process patents is the same as for other patents, to protect and those who take the risks inherent in developing a new useful process so as too encourage risk-taking in that area and promote progress. I don't see why business process patents are categorically bad.
I can certainly see arguments that the patent system we have now is bad in a lot of more general ways, or that certain classes of patents should have more limited duration, etc. but I don't see that business process patents are, as a category, bad where others are good.
No, not really. Its not illegal to acquire monopoly power in a market.
However, if you do, it becomes illegal for you to act in ways you would, if you did not have a monopoly, be allowed to act, related to protecting that monopoly or extending it into other markets.
No, they didn't.
I mean, yes, if they had you pick out movies, and then they sent you exactly those movies for a limited period of time, and then you sent them back and could get new ones, that would be the unpatented model of almost everyone b&m movie rental store (and Netflix original model, before they came up with the new and innovative one.)
But that's not what Netflix started doing that made it a break out hit and actually threatened Blockbusters business.
Working mechanical device patents (and, for that matter, all copyrights) are also, by definition, monopolies.
Descriptions are subject to copyright. Processes, business or otherwise, are subject to patent.
Identifying marks used in trade are subject to trademark protection, but they are also quite often subject to copyright protection as well.
These "principles" aren't "obvious", there statements of either your misguided opinion of what the law is, or your personal opinion of what is should be, not some universal self-evident statements of truth.
They have, as far as I can tell, precisely two patents, one covering their process, and the other covering their mailing envelope.
It doesn't really matter if Blockbuster was working on developing a similar online rental program first, anymore than in a patent for a more traditional invention it would matter if someone else had thought of the same general idea and was in the process of developing it into a patentable invention.
Did they use the Netflix style mailer? Did they use the Netflix-style preference lists, or strict this-one-next queues or some other method of selecting what you get? Because those seem to be the two specific patents at issue, and doing something similar in outline but outside of the specific innovation claimed in the patent isn't clearly prior art relevant to the patent.
It may be more efficient to pursue such lawsuits in series rather than parallel, its also possible that the details of some of the similar operations avoid the specific patented processes. It may be that they've C&D'ed some of the others, and are negotiating and haven't gotten to the point of filing a lawsuit yet. It's hard to tell.
I think the suggestion is that Vista will succeed regardless of its merits because of Microsoft's aggressive marketing partnerships which will be pushing it everywhere, both through new purchases and to people getting service on their old machines.
Titan's a moon of Saturn, so if Jupiter was a brown dwarf it wouldn't do much. Then again, while it has a substantial atmosphere (uniquely among all moons in the Solar System), I'd hardly say it's "pretty close" to earthlike conditions, other than having a dense, mostly-nitrogen atmosphere.
Cats and dogs are sentient, as the term is generally used. The term has sometimes been borrowed in science fiction to denote human-like intellect, but given its well-established use, that's a poor borrowing (better is the more common "sapient" or, as a noun, "sophont"; the latter isn't a word in general use but has an appropriate etymology, the former is in general use, but in a way that supports the pseudo-technical extension of its meaning to this use better than "sentient".)
common use? it means pertaining to, consisting of, or representing the earth as distinct from other planets, which is pretty close to precisely the opposite of the distinction you are trying to make here, and the natural interpretation from the etymology is "earthlike". For use to a non-astronomically-technical audience, "rocky world" is probably best, and "Earth-like" is no less clear than "terrestrial".
Its not illegal to bundle software. It is illegal to leverage a monopoly in one market to suppress competition in another market.